Advertisements and the unconscious mind

Already, on your way to work, you are most likely inudated with messages. How many do you remember consciously? Most likely hardly any. May be the commercial in the radio, and this might be so because they repeated it so often.

In 2010, I trained a group of leaders from an insurance company in Langkawi (Malaysia) in Advanced Leadership Skills and NLP. It was a 2-days training.

The participants were great and the location fantastic.

On the second day, I woke up, went to the shower and started to whistle a happy tune. I wondered that this song would come to my mind because it had been a long, long time, since I heard it.

Or so I thought.

When I left the hotel room, it immediately hit me. The song I was whistling was also played in the hotel. It was everywhere. They played it in the elevator, the breakfast room and other, publicly available places. And, worse of all, they only played the same song, over and over again.

Somehow, I didn’t realise that the first day (don’t judge me here, okay!!), and only the second day.

It had sneaked into my unconscious mind, my unconscious mind accepted it and happily played it back.

I got a shock!!

Even so I teach this stuff in all my NLP and Hypnosis training, this just simply made it so obvious.

We all know that we don’t receive or process all the information that is around us. We forget where we put stuff. We cannot pick up all the information presented to us by another party – some call it selective hearing. When we are totally focussed on one task at one time, everything else around us fades away.

In other situations, we interpret somethingdifferently compared to others – ever watched a movie that you liked, but no one else? That is what I am talking about.

Basically, we delete information in an ongoing manner. In fact, we only preceive a minute part of the information. But that is stuff for another topic.

And that is okay.

But!!

Be aware that the message might still be recognised or perceived despite the fact that we don’t consciously hear it.

Currently, the presidential election is on in the US. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney fight for every single vote. The race between the two is tight.

Will Barrack Obama maintain his job as a president or will Mitt Romney replace him

Advertisements are a huge influencer in this game.

Michael Steele, MSNBC Political Analyst in a recent article stated, that “In the state of Ohio, 73,000commercials ran and for all of the money spent it has barely moved the needle in the polls. Voters have made up their minds very early.”

I am not sure about the second part of the statement, as I don’t see myself as an expert in media campaigning, but I sure believe that this is a tremendous number of ads trying to influence the mind of the voters.

“By Election Day, an estimated 2 million political advertisements will have aired on television during the current campaign. That total, which covers presidential and congressional races, doesn’t even include ads that run on cable or the Internet.

If all the local ads were 30 second spots, it would take a viewer almost two years to sit through them, watching 24 hours a day. Even to watch for a day would be form of torture.”

Wow.

That’s quite a bit, isn’t it?

The big, BIG question is, of course, how is it really influencing our minds and can we do anything about it?

That’s a topic (again!) for another day, but be assured, Words Can Change Minds.

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If you want to learn NLP, Hypnosis, or learn how to influence others powerfully through the “Words That Change Minds” – The Language and Behavioru Profile, contact us at andreas.dorn AT gmail.com, call us at +6012 – 287 5048 (Malaysia) or check out our homepage at Asia Mind Dynamics.